Monday, August 13, 2007

The State Of Surface Stations

Surface Stations is a project initiated by retired weatherman Anthony Watts. Its purpose is to refute Global Warming by snapping pictures of NOAA weather stations with siting issues and posting them to Conservative websites, where folks who, in general, wouldn't know a surface station from a hole in the ground then cry out "shame! shame!" in unison in the hopes of attracting the attention of Talk Radio.

As of today, the gang at Surface Stations are within a hair of having surveyed one quarter of the USHCN stations--281 to be precise--in the lower 48 states of the U.S.A. Their locations are given in the graphic above. What is fairly clear from this graphic is that SS's efforts have been concentrated 1) on the West Coast (Anthony Watts home state is California), and 2) wherever else their volunteers hail from. For example, surveys from Maine are (I am guessing) largely the work of Kristen Byrnes, the famous denying munchkin. There is a further clear trend towards surveying urban areas, also probably due to the demographics of the people making up Watt's volunteers.

Given that urban stations are more likely to be subject to siting compromises (fewer wide open fields, more asphalt), it is I think significant that only 10 per cent of the sites having been noted as not being in compliance with NOAA . Or at least, Mr. Watts has only felt obliged to scream outrage on 28 occasions.

Hmm. I wonder what the coverage is like down in Buffalo. And I wonder, since Anthony has been considering internationalizing his efforts,where the local Canadian stations are located? Must be one or two around the GTA.

Well he has a point and he doesn't at the same time. The asphalt and air conditioning units are absolutely compromising the readings of this station. However, in most of the developed world there's a whole lot of asphalt. It definately warms thign sup to cut down trees and pave fields. This wouldn't mean that global warming isn't happenening, just that it may have many contributing factors. And some of the weather stations should be moved. I believe most in Canada are at airports.

With regards to your attempt to denigrate the folks helping out Anthony as being of a low educational status: So what was your degree in? Do you even have one? What do you do for a living? Just curious.

About twenty years ago I did a Masters thesis in philosophy/Literature, and wrote on Wittgenstein and Francis Bacon. Nowadays I do research for a trade association.

In this case I wasn't denigrating Anthony's volunteers, but the people who visit the Conservative websites that report on their exploits (places like Newsbusters and SDA). None of these guys would be able to identify a weather station if it bit them on the ass, and suddenly they have opinions about them. And I suspect this would have been the case with most of Steve/Anthony's readers/volunteers up to about two months ago.

After they've done checking on the surface stations in the US, maybe they could go check the surface stations and the ocean temperatures on the 98% of the earth that is not the US. Then McIntyre could send them up to the troposphere to check the temperatures there. I bet Exxon would be willing to fund that.

Maybe then they would be too busy to blog about it. So it would all be good.